In This Stormy Sea (I'm Struggling to Stay Afloat)
by Aerotes
Summary: Beth is kind of sick. Daryl is kind of falling apart. [Apart of the 'You and I (We'll Save The World Together)' verse]


"I'll be okay." Beth tells him but he can't believe her when her voice is cracking and trembling and the hand that he holds in his own feels so frail and weak and he's terrified that he's going to squeeze her hand and it'll just shatter. Not when she's laying in a hospital bed with a thousand and one machines on her, not when she's paler than the sheets and not when Steph looks like she'd weight more than her own mother.

"You better be." Daryl tells her, his voice gruff with thinly veiled emotion. He won't cry, not now with Steph in the room and not when Beth needs him to stay strong and hold their family together. If this is what Beth has to deal with every single time he crashes and burns, then he thinks that she might be God.

Except God wouldn't be laying in a hospital bed with doctors shaking their heads at his condition and his family wouldn't have to be sitting by his bedside absolutely terrified that they were about to lose almost their entire world.

"Who else would make you hot chocolate and watch cartoons with you at three in the morning?" She asks, with a smile on her face, though it's shaky and they all fucking know it's not real because Beth's getting too fucking weak to offer them real smiles. Daryl wonders if that's because she's tired because of the sickness that seemed far too intent on having a prolonged stay in her body or if she's losing the will to fight. Both hurt to think about so he growls at those thoughts and try to scare them away. They lurk in the corners of his mind anyway.

She squeezes his hand softly – and at least there's still some strength in her fingers, that has to count for something, right? – and God fucking damn it she feels so cold, so so cold but he ignores that and he chokes back tears at the sound of her broken whisper of 'I love you'.

Visiting hours are almost over and Beth needs her sleep and no matter how much Daryl wants to stay behind and hold her hand and stroke her hair back out of her face and make her hot chocolate and watch ridiculous cartoons with her and Steph and talk about their future – 'Daryl I love you so much but we're not raising a miniature army of children.' 'I think we should get a dog.' – he finds himself scooping up Steph and pressing a kiss to Beth's forehead and thinks that maybe his entire world won't come crashing down around him while he's away from her because she's strong, she's so fucking strong.

"I'll see you tomorrow." She promises, wrapping her arms around Steph and shushes her when tears start to stain the hospital gown. "I'll be here."

He has to turn his back on her so she doesn't see his tears.

"Steph, please eat." Daryl's almost bordering on begging now, but Steph just gives a glance towards her food and drops the fork. It clatters noisily against the edge of the plate and hits the table with a dull thud. They both stare at it for a long moment before Daryl sighs and pulls his baby close to him.

"She'll be okay." Daryl says and he's not entirely sure if he's lying or not but he fucking hopes that he's not – God, he'd tear the entire world apart and put it all back together again if it meant that Beth would be okay. Steph just shakes her head and makes a sound in the back of her throat. She hesitates for a moment before throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her face into his shoulder and her sobs wrack through her body and down into Daryl's soul and soon he finds himself sitting on the kitchen floor with his daughter and crying because the world's most strongest women wasn't at home where she was supposed to be, wasn't singing in the shower and wasn't reading her terrible novels that never quite made any sense, she was lying in a hospital bed and fighting for her life and she was _alone._

Daryl hasn't felt so empty since he returned home.

"I can't do it if I lose her." Daryl tells three people those words exactly. Merle, who scoffs at him and tells him that he's being stupid because even without Beth, Daryl's made friends that would jam all the pieces of him back together and glue them down. The thought makes him shaky because he doesn't want to see a world without Beth and he has to excuse himself to go throw up in the bathroom.

Preston – his therapist, although at this point he could also be considered a friend – leans back in his chair with a long sigh and is silent for a long moment. "I know." He said finally. "That's what I'm worried about."

Hershel, who is far more composed than Daryl, gives him a firm look, slides a shot of whiskey over and says "You better pull yourself together son, because the last thing she needs to come home to is the two best things in her life falling to pieces."

So he begins to try to stitch himself back together, not for himself but for Beth, and he's a fucking amateur at it because it seems like he just doesn't have enough thread to do so and he's trying his best but his best is laid up in hospital and might not live to see another episode of the stupid cartoon they've been marathon watching lately – and that's enough for his heart to skip a beat or six.

Steph's teacher calls him while he's at work – or at least he's trying to work but his hands are trembling and Carol is fussing over him and telling him to 'go home' and asking if he's okay but no, he's not fucking okay thank you very much – and says that she's worried about how Stephanie is holding up and if Daryl's thought about taking her to see a professional and says that it might be best for both of them if he and Stephanie took some time off and spent some quality time together.

And he feels terrible because, no, he hadn't thought about taking Steph to a professional, and he should have, because Preston was a fucking champion at what he did, so he takes two shots of whisky to try to burn away all his feelings and calls Merle.

But Merle being Merle is off somewhere in fairyland and is nowhere near coherent enough to hold a twenty second phone conversation, let alone drive and Daryl feels far too shaky and there's no fucking way that he's driving with Steph if he's had alcohol in his system. He curses himself four times over and glances towards Carol who looks far too busy to be bothered and heaves a sigh.

He scrolls down his contact list and hesitates over the name for a moment before calling.

"Are you busy?"

It's not that Daryl doesn't like Rick, in fact it's the complete opposite, but Rick has this uncanny ability to seem to be looking straight through Daryl and right down to his soul. He's quite on the way to Steph's school but Daryl can feel the worried glances. Neither of them say anything until they're out the front of the school and Daryl's hand is on the door handle.

"Daryl." The officer says quietly and the other man paused. "Just… we're here for you, okay? There is absolutely no reason why you have to do this alone."

"I'm not doing it alone." He says truthfully. "Steph and Beth and me are going to pull through this together."

Rick doesn't say a single word to that.

Beth's wearing an oxygen mask. The plastic mists with her every breath and Daryl feels absolutely nauseous looking at it because it seems to scream at him and it's telling him that Beth isn't getting any better, she's just getting sicker and sicker and he doesn't fucking know if she's going to make it through this and he thinks it's ugly. It's so fucking ugly and unfair and he hates it, he hates it, he hates it so fucking much.

"I'm going to be okay." She tries to tell him but her voice is muffled by the mask and god damn his heart clenches like a fist and his lungs constrict and he can't breathe and there's a sob bubbling up in his chest that's threatening to break free but he knows that if he lets go now, he'll fall down and he'll never, ever get back up again.

"Hey." Beth says quietly, breaking him away from his thoughts and squeezing his hand. She pulls the oxygen mask off her face long enough to bring him into a kiss and Daryl thinks that maybe he might need the oxygen mask.

Daryl takes Steph into Preston and when he tries to leave the room to give the pair of them some privacy, Steph reaches out and grabs his hand, pleading eyes silently begging him not to leave.

Okay then.

He sits down in the chair that was far too familiar and pulls Steph on to his lap, arms wrapped tightly around her and Preston talks.

The thing about Preston is that he is a man that maybe wasn't a superhero or a miracle worker, but he's god damned close to it. His voice is calm and strong when he talks to Steph and though it takes a few minutes, Steph speaks and it's the most beautiful thing he's heard even though her voice is weak from a lack of disuse but she's speaking and that's all that matters. He holds her tight during the entire session and at the end of it, he brings Preston into a hug and whispers 'Thank you.'

"Hold on." Preston whispers back, and his hug is just how his voice is. "I know it's hard but you need to bring all three of you through this."

It sounds fucking impossible but Daryl tries and tries and tries.

"She's not getting any better." The doctor tells Daryl three weeks later.

"She's ain't getting any worse either."

"Daryl it might be time to consider what option are lef-"

"Don't. She's going to make it through this."

Despite what he told the doctor, Daryl truly thinks that maybe today or tomorrow or Tuesday next week might be the last time he'll ever see Beth alive again. He doesn't sleep anymore and spends far too many nights curled up around Steph watching cartoons and drinking hot chocolate and tries to ignore the fact that his life is crumbling away and tearing away at the stitches.

Sometimes Daryl stares up at the ceiling and wonders how he would've survived without Beth. Sometimes he lies to himself and says that his brother would drag him through life and force him to hold on.

Sometimes he tells himself the truth and says that he simply wouldn't have survived.

He's not so sure he can hold himself together for much longer but he does. For Steph and Beth.

For them.

It's eighteen minutes past two and Daryl hasn't slept at all. Steph climbed into his bed about an hour ago and cried into his shoulder before falling silent. She's still awake though.

The phone rings and Daryl's heart does this funny little twist that feels like it's being put through a paper shredder because no one would call him at this fucking time unless it's Merle – and amazingly enough, Merle hasn't been too much of an asshole lately – or Beth's doctor.

He doesn't even glance at the caller ID and answers, holding his breath and almost cries out in pain that maybe wasn't physical but was ripping him to shreds when the following words are spoken.

"You need to come in."

Daryl can almost feel his life slipping away from him as he drives. It's raining and he thinks that if maybe Steph wasn't in the car, he'd just let go of the wheel and crash into a tree. He doesn't though, keeps them both alive and soon they're standing in the hospital, drips of rain water falling off them like tears.

The doctor doesn't look defeated though. Doesn't look pitiful or sympathetic or broken or any of those things. He just looks hopeful.

"She's…?" Daryl can't finish the sentence, grief and hope mingling together to form a rock in his throat.

"She's okay."

Relief is like a coursing river and he takes a moment to compose himself and to take Steph's hand and he squeezes it gently. She's tired and sad and losing her mother and she's holding up a lot better than he is. He feels like he should be amazed by her but he reminds himself who her mother is.

"We made a change in Beth's medication. She's not better yet but she's getting there."

And that was all that mattered.

It takes three weeks until Beth begins to seem like herself and it's a fucking miracle that makes his heart flutter in his chest the way it did on the day of their wedding because he loves her. He loves her so fucking much. She hugs Steph so tight and brings him down into a kiss and he's crying but its okay.

It's okay because Beth's okay.

Her hand trails down his face and comes to tangle in his dog tags and she smiles at him. "You soldiered through it." She says softly.

And he cries harder and says, "no, you're the one that soldiered through it. I'm so proud of you. I'm so lucky to have you. I love you. I love you so much," and slips off the tags and puts it around Beth's neck because she's the fucking soldier now.

She laughs and it's the best sound Daryl has ever heard.

"I love you." Beth whispers to the room at three am in the morning when the three of them are all crammed onto the couch watching cartoons and drinking hot chocolate. Really, Steph should be in bed but neither of them have the heart to tell her so, they just share loving glances when she falls asleep on Beth's legs.

"Don't ever do that again." Daryl tries his best not to sound choked up.

"I promise." She says and starts to stitch him back together.


End file.
